Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Making History with Issuu, a Paperless Magazine Maker

The students in my West Civ class just published a series of "Year in Review" history magazines. Exported as pdfs to Issuu.com, I think they make an impressive case for opting for digital over paper in student publishing.

Thought I'd share an example with you!

Check out the 'works cited' page at the end; the student editors of this edition found some excellent resources online (we've been working on increasing the quality of our source and reference material). A primary source compendium that's become standard in our class is the Internet History Sourcebooks Project -- it and the BBC History site have literally made history textbooks in our classroom... well... history.

Best of all, the kids loved making these magazines. For the past couple of days, our room has been transformed into a virtual publishing house. And when technology and content together can foster that kind of engagement, you know you're on the right track.

8 comments:

I just recently did the same project with some of my students. We built our magazines on Youblisher though. I do like the interface of issuu a bit better.

Next year, if all goes well, I plan on having my students create open-content magazines by unit so that they can be used in the school and by subsequent classes.

I'd be interested to collaborate to see how you've managed to get the students to "up the ante" on their source material. I teach middle school, and I try to encourage them to investigate sources, but for this age group they tend to gravitate towards the quickest solution. (Not all of them do, but a good percentage!)

Great design. Congratulations to your students. I considered doing something similar with my students, but hesitated because I thought it would be too similar to copying and pasting Wikipedia. How is your students' magazine different from Wikipedia/encyclopedias?

Subscribe via RSS Reader

Teach Paperless: Now!

TeachPaperless began in February 2009 as a blog detailing the experiences of one teacher in a paperless classroom. It has grown to be something much more than that. In January 2011, TeachPaperless became a collaboratively written blog dedicated to conversation and commentary about the intertwined worlds of digital technology, new media, and education.

Buzz Paperless

TeachPaperless was noted as a Twitterer worth ReTweeting by Education Week's Digital Education blog. Also in Ed Week: "Shelly Blake-Plock has had some really intriguing posts already this year and I'm already behind. Considering he published 639 entries on his TeachPaperless blog in 2009 it's going to be hard to keep up, but well worth the try."

“When I originally contacted Shelley last week to inquire as to whether or not he would be willing to talk to my staff, he jumped right in, and he didn’t disappoint. What impressed me most about him as I listened to him describe his practice was his clear vision of what it meant for his students to function in a classroom that he designed: it was about them learning. He truly designed the environment with their learning–their unbridled learning–in mind. His decision was not a secretarial one, but rather came from a desire to push students to take control of information gathering, processing, and creating.” – Chalkdust 101

TeachPaperless was named one of the 'Top 25 Blogs for Educators' byWorld Wide Learn.

"I think you have some great ideas for teachers, and as we do professional development around the state of Maryland, we will point teachers to your blog." Debbie Vickers of Thinkport.org a partnership between Maryland Public Television and Johns Hopkins University's Center for Technology in Education

"The invention of the computer promised to lead us to a paperless society but has failed to deliver on that promise... until now, perhaps?" TeachPaperless was featured by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning as an Everyday Innovation

Your friendly contributing bloggers...

License and Disclaimer

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

You may re-use this content online for noncommercial purposes without needing to ask permission, as long as you credit the source in writing as Teach Paperless and on the web by adding a link back to our web site,www.teachpaperless.com

And of course, everything on this blog is the personal opinion of the individual bloggers and does not reflect the opinions of of anyone else, including employers, in any way. But that should be obvious by now.

Photo Credit: MJ Wojewodzki; a portion of a painted wall in the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii [2006]